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You have been working hard to create a sales
report to give to your boss.

As soon as you return the report to her, she calls you and wants
you to visit her room for a couple of minutes.

The topic of the meeting is your report and why your boss is not
happy about it.

She thinks that you could do much better and gives you some
negative (but constructive) feedback about your work.

You go to your desk again, but you find it hard to concentrate on
your work.

You keep thinking about the feedback you just got.

Although the feedback you got was constructive, you still find it
difficult to find any positive sides in it.

Your whole workday is ruined and you feel like leaving to go home
early.

The collision of two worlds

Facing negative feedback is never easy. No matter if the feedback
is constructive, it still may be very hard to swallow -
especially if we receive it after some hard work and we think we
have done our best to accomplish a task.

When you face negative feedback, two worlds collide: your
expectations, their expectations and how the two don’t
match.

This collision is inevitable, when your expectations of your
work, your skills or yourself are out of sync with the external
expectations of you. You might also find it shocking that the
output you generated was not enough, no matter if you thought it
was almost perfect.

Even if the feedback is given to you in a constructive manner,
you may still think it’s unfair towards you and you may get very
emotional in front of the person who gave you that
feedback.

This makes the situation even worse.

Are you ready to face the criticism?

At some point, you are going to have to face criticism in what
you do. However, what makes the difference between the ones who succeed and those
who don’t is the way they handle criticism.

The people, who are going to fail, are taking the critique very
personally and fail to take corrective action based on the
feedback. They think that the person who gave criticism is wrong
and doesn’t know what he/she is talking about.

On the other hand, the people who are successful understand that
feedback is required in order to grow. It can also improve your
results and let you become even more successful.

In fact, if you are receiving feedback, you should be grateful
for it. Appreciate the fact that someone gave you valuable advice
on how to become better in what you do or how to achieve better
results in your work.

Learn to listen carefully

Although hearing feedback is never easy, it is necessary for
our growth and development. In
order to handle the feedback in the right manner, see it as
constructive criticism.

If the criticism is unjustified or goes to a personal level, then
it should be ignored.

Appreciate the feedback and the fact that the other person was
willing to give it to you. Especially if the feedback is coming
from someone who you look up to, so you should be genuinely
grateful for him/her.

Even though appreciation plays a big part in how you handle the
feedback, it is not enough. In fact, what you do (or don’t do)
next plays a big part how helpful the feedback turns out to
be.

It’s your responsibility to take
action after receiving feedback from your actions or from
your work. Otherwise the time spent on the feedback is wasted and
you won’t be able to improve as quickly as the reviewer
wanted.

4 tips for handling criticism

In order to handle the criticism better, remember these steps the
next time:

1. Appreciate. The number one thing to do is to
appreciate the feedback, since it is a great way to improve
yourself and your actions. Feeling grateful helps with handling
the criticism - it makes accepting it much easier.

2. Take it constructively. Take the feedback as
constructive, not as damaging. There are times when you might
receive feedback which is not justified, but those cases exist
far less than the constructive ones. Understand the value of
criticism and that it is a great way to reach success faster.
It’s much better to receive it, rather than to live in your own
fantasy world thinking that everything is alright.

3. Say thank you. Genuinely thank the person who
gave you the feedback. Really, say it. Sometimes the person might
be surprised at this behavior, but his/her feedback is really a
useful tool for creating something much better in the
future.

4. Take action. Finally, the feedback is useless
if it’s not acted upon. That’s why it’s important to implement
the points that the other person gave you the feedback
about.

The faster you take corrective action, the
better.

Otherwise there is a great danger that you are never fully
learning about the feedback that was given to you.

Over to you: When did you receive negative feedback the
last time? How did you feel? How did you handle
it?